This week on Modern Mentor, I interviewed one of my newest heroes, Kevin Ervin Kelly, author of the new book, Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together. I picked up Kevin’s book kind of by accident. It’s a long story. But I loved it so much, as soon as I finished it, I went back to the beginning and read it again. I reached out to him and now the rest is history.
Kevin is an award-winning architect, brand innovator, and co-founder of the strategic design firm Shook Kelley. But trust me. His work – and writing – on design is all about creating spaces that draw people in. That help us have our best experiences. That connect us and empower us and allow us to achieve tremendous things.
It’s incredible how much insight he has to offer to anyone striving to achieve workplace success.
For our full conversation, listen to the episode here or with the player below:
Here are some of our key takeaways.
I asked Kevin about his interest in and passion for places.
And he replied,
“Remember that joke where the older fish asked the younger fish, how’s the water? And the younger fish says, ‘what’s water?’ That’s kind of what we are as humans. There is no time that we’re not in a place. We’re always in a place, even when we’re texting or doom scrolling. No matter where we are, we’re in a place, but we’re not really aware. Sometimes we say we’re in an environment, but actually the environment is in us. Just as much as the food we eat. And if you live off a diet of junk food, you’re going to have an unhealthy life. Your quality of life is going to suffer the same with environments. And if you’re in bad environments, which are all over society, and oftentimes people don’t get to choose their environment…then your quality of relationships, your longevity, your sense of loneliness or connectedness are greatly affected.”
We also chatted about the power of just observing people in spaces.
“We don’t know why we’re attracted to things. We have an involuntary visual system. We don’t tell our eyes what to look at. Our eyes look at what it believes is most pertinent…your other senses are involuntary too. We don’t tell our nose to smell something most of the time. It smells what it wants and it hears what it wants. And in fact, it puts all those things together. Visual, hearing, auditory, olfactory glands all work together in this beautiful kind of symphony to help us decide about our world.
[The workplace is]a great venue to look at. And something we study a lot is people come into their offices with a full tank of energy. Kind of like an electric car, their batteries fully charged, but then as they navigate working through the office, phone calls, emails, go out to lunch, their battery starts to wear down and by fiveby the five o’clock they’re starting to go, wow, ‘I’m really tired.’
We can all think about places we go to that really restore our energy. [Like nature, or symmetry]. And so what it really helps people in the work world to do. It’s one to notice when people’s batteries are being drained and when they’re being filled up. To notice what people gravitate to and notice what they avoid. In our work, we look at where people stand, where they talk, where they don’t talk.”
Kevin introduced the concept of “bonfire moments” and I had to ask about them.
He talked about growing up in Florida and spending days with friends in swamps and nature. And at some point…
“…a self-appointed bonfire master would take charge and build this bonfire and a group of people would be willing to work for that bonfire master and [build it]…none of this was organized. We just knew that that was the highlight of the day. And then a group of strangers…would collect together…in a very powerful way.”
And we chatted about some of the ways he helps his clients try to create these kinds of moments in their workplaces. So much to think about!
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kevin. Pick up a copy of his book Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together wherever books are sold.